My Best Books of 2017

While this year saw less reading than usual for various reasons, I still found it difficult to produce a Top Ten. Consequently this year it’s been extended as I made the decision to include all my 4.5* and 5* books rather than leave some out. As ever my 5* reads are far fewer and so the Top 5 was the easy bit, though I added a couple of my best 4.5* reads. My list includes books by some old favourites as well as some newly discovered authors to me and some great debut novels. So here we go, in no particular order starting with my 4.5* reads.

When Sophie Taylor’s life falls apart, there is only one thing to do: escape and find a new one.

Dragged to Montenegro by her best friend Anna, Sophie begins to see the light at the end of a very dark tunnel. But when she stumbles into an old, run-down house on the Bay of Kotor, she surprises even herself when she buys it.

Surrounded by old furniture, left behind by the former inhabitants, Sophie becomes obsessed by a young Balkan couple when she discovers a bundle of letters from the 1940s in a broken roll-top desk. Letters that speak of great love, hope and a mystery Sophie can’t help but get drawn into.

Days in Montenegro are nothing like she expected and as Sophie’s home begins to fill with a motley crew of lodgers, the house by the bay begins to breathe again. And for Sophie, life seems to be restarting. But letting go of the past is easier said than done…

A murder without a bodyEighteen-year-old Chloe Emery returns to her West London home one day to find the house covered in blood and Kate, her mother, gone. There may not be a body, but everything else points to murder.

A girl too scared to talkMaeve Kerrigan is young, ambitious and determined to prove she’s up to her new role as detective sergeant. She suspects Chloe is holding something back, but best friend Bethany Norris won’t let Maeve get close. What exactly is Bethany protecting Chloe from?

A detective with everything to proveAs the team dig deeper into the residents of Valerian Road, no one is above suspicion. All Maeve needs is one person to talk, but that’s not going to happen. Because even in a case of murder, some secrets are too terrible to share…

All eleven-year-old Tanya Randall wants is a happy family. But Mum does nothing besides housework, Dad’s always down the pub and Nanna Purvis moans at everyone except her dog. Then Shelley arrives –– the miracle baby who fuses the Randall family in love for their little gumnut blossom.

Tanya’s life gets even better when she meets an uncle she didn’t know she had. He tells her she’s beautiful and could be a model. Her family refuses to talk about him. But that’s okay, it’s their little secret.

Then one blistering summer day tragedy strikes, and the surrounding mystery and suspicion tear apart this fragile family web.

Embracing the social changes of 1970s Australia, against a backdrop of native fauna and flora, The Silent Kookaburra is a haunting exploration of the blessings, curses and tyranny of memory.

When Alice McCleish’s gardener Brian unearths an object of great archaeological significance deep under the compost heap it is not only Alice who is affected. Her friendship with Margaret Allerton, retired Professor of Anthropology, as well as Alice’s family, friends and neighbours are all touched.

Alice and Margaret find themselves questioning long-held beliefs about the material and spiritual world that surrounds them. Both women find their lives transformed unalterably by their newfound companionship. Serendipity puts Alice’s nearest neighbour, the troubled Violet Turnbull, in touch with the enigmatic Avian Tyler, whose mystical ‘gift’ offers Violet a promise of liberation.

All the while an echoing voice from long, long ago hints at the history of the locality dominated by the standing stone circle that bestrides the skyline above the small community of Duddo. This harrowing story reveals the provenance of the artefacts found beneath that compost heap.

June 2007: a barbaric nail bomb is planted outside a London nightclub, a spy is found dead in his garden, and a blazing Jeep is driven into Glasgow airport. Three events bound by an earth-shattering connection that should have remained buried forever.

From the author of ‘The Theseus Paradox’, the smash-hit 7/7 thriller based on true events, comes the sequel about a real-life mystery that threatens to destroy a nation. Detective Inspector Jake Flannagan must uncover how a series of astonishing events are inextricably linked, before the past closes in on him.

In the 60s London of gangsters, prejudice and terrifying gang wars, Barrister Charles Holborne spends his life dealing with the worst examples of violent criminality. After successfully winning a number of high profile cases, he is building a reputation among Soho’s criminal classes as a man who gets the job done, a reputation that doesn’t endear him to his establishment colleagues.

Yet Charles is not all he seems, and is battling both personal demons and his own past. When his philandering wife Henrietta is found with her throat slashed, Charles finds himself on the wrong side of the law and in serious trouble of the murderous kind. Arrested for her murder, can Charles discover the truth of her brutal slaying and escape the hangman’s noose?

Alice Rose is a foundling, discovered on the Yorkshire moors above Haworth as a baby. Adopted but then later rejected again by a horrid step-mother, Alice struggles to find a place where she belongs. Only baking – the scent of cinnamon and citrus and the feel of butter and flour between her fingers – brings a comforting sense of home.

So it seems natural that when she finally decides to return to Haworth, Alice turns to baking again, taking over a run-down little teashop and working to set up an afternoon tea emporium.

Luckily she soon makes friends – including a Grecian god-like neighbour – who help her both set up home and try to solve the mystery of who she is. There are one or two last twists in the dark fairytale of Alice’s life to come . . . but can she find her happily ever after?

In my reckless and undiscouraged youth, I worked in a walnut-panelled office thirteen floors above West 35th Street.

When 85-year-old Lillian Boxfish steps out of her apartment on New Year’s Eve in 1984, little does she know she’s about to embark on a journey across the whole of Manhattan.

But Lillian is no ordinary 85-year-old. On her arrival to New York in the 1930s she took the city by storm, working her way up from writing copy for Macy’s department store to become the highest paid advertising woman in the world. Now, alone on New Year’s Eve, her usual holiday ritual in ruins, Lillian decides to take a walk. After all, it might be her last chance. Armed with only her mink coat and quick-witted charm, Lillian walks, and begins to reveal the story of her remarkable life. The trouble is, once she starts walking she finds she can’t stop.

On a walk that takes her over 10 miles around the city, Lillian meets bartenders, shopkeepers, criminals, children, parents, and parents-to-be, while recalling a life of excitement and adversity, passion and heartbreak, illuminating all the ways she and New York have changed – and endured.

1909. Cornwall. Her family ruined, Bea is forced to leave Tressillion House, and self-made business woman Sybil moves in. Owning Tressillion is Sybil’s triumph – but now what? As the house casts its spell over her, as she starts to make friends in the village despite herself, will Sybil be able to build a new life here, or will hatred always rule her heart?

Bea finds herself in London, responsible for her mother and sister’s security. Her only hope is to marry Jonathon, the new heir. Desperate for options, she stumbles into the White Camellia tearoom, a gathering place for the growing suffrage movement. For Bea it’s life-changing, can she pursue her ambition if it will heap further scandal on the family? Will she risk arrest or worse?

When those very dangers send Bea and her White Camellia friends back to Cornwall, the two women must finally confront each other and Tresillion’s long buried secrets.

And now for my Top 5 reads of 2017 ending with the one I’ve chosen as my book of the year.

Loveday Cardew prefers books to people. If you look carefully, you might glimpse the first lines of the novels she loves most tattooed on her skin. But there are some things Loveday will never show you.

Into her refuge – the York book emporium where she works – come a poet, a lover, a friend, and three mysterious deliveries, each of which stirs unsettling memories.

Everything is about to change for Loveday. Someone knows about her past and she can’t hide any longer. She must decide who around her she can trust. Can she find the courage to right a heartbreaking wrong? And will she ever find the words to tell her own story?

Meet the ‘Keeper of Lost Things’…Once a celebrated author of short stories now in his twilight years, Anthony Peardew has spent half his life collecting lost objects, trying to atone for a promise broken many years before.

Realising he is running out of time, he leaves his house and all its lost treasures to his assistant Laura, the one person he can trust to fulfil his legacy and reunite the thousands of objects with their rightful owners.

But the final wishes of the ‘Keeper of Lost Things’ have unforeseen repercussions which trigger a most serendipitous series of encounters…

My Book of the Year

Minnie and her sister Clara, spinsters both, live in a dilapidated country house in the middle of a housing estate, built when their father sold off the family’s land. Now in their seventies, their days follow a well-established routine: long gone are the garden parties, the tennis lessons and their suffocatingly strict mother. Gone, too, is any mention of what happened when Minnie was sixteen, and the secret the family buried in the grounds of their estate.

Directly opposite them lives Max, an 11-year-old whose life with his mum has changed beyond recognition since her new boyfriend arrived. Cast aside, he takes solace in Minnie’s careful routine, observed through his bedroom window.

Over the course of the summer, both begin to tell their stories: Max through a Dictaphone, Minnie through a diary. As their tales intertwine, ghosts are put to rest and challenges faced, in a story that is as dark as it is uplifting.

I know 2017 has been a challenging year for many of us and my own diagnosis in the summer certainly threw a personal spanner in the works. But I have been overwhelmed by the love and support shown by the blogging and writing community in still sharing my meagre output, giving my blog a shout out and checking in on me. I thank you all, it has been very much appreciated, especially in view of my dismal failure to shout much back. It has also meant that many of the books I agreed to read and review had to take a back seat and are still waiting to either be picked up and read, and in some cases have been read but still require a review. As a shout out to those lovely publishers and authors, you are still on my radar and when the reading mojo is back and I’m looking forward to catching up, especially with the following.

May 2018 bring you all good things! I can’t wait to see what you think of A Gentleman in Moscow if you’re able to get to that one. So many great books on your list and quite a few that I don’t recall seeing before.

Thanks Ann Marie. I know you loved A Gentleman in Moscow and It’s been waiting on my pile for ages. I’m not taking new requests or requesting from NetGalley so that when the time comes I’ll be playing catch-up with a vengeance. All the best xx

How lovely to see Lillian Boxfish on the list. It seems like an age ago I read that but I remember really enjoying it. You have a wonderful list of books waiting for you. I’ll look forward to seeing what you make of one of my favourites, Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves.

The Keeper of Lost Things is on my bedside table ready to read, I just need to get there. I loved Let The Dead Speak. I didn’t do a top ten list this year, but that would have been on it if it had. Hoping for a healthier 2018 for you so you can get through some of those books x

Thanks Emma, I nearly didn’t do a list myself as I felt I hadn’t read enough but a 5* read is still a 5* read whether it’s the only book or the 100th book. Hope you’ll enjoy Keeper … When you get to it. I’ll let you into a secret – it may have been a Christmas miracle but I read a book! Delib reading non review books to reduce the pressure so hopefully things will improve. All best wishes and Happy Reading xx

I think that we book bloggers are the biggest masochists ever. Choosing a Top Ten or Twenty is hell, and I remember some of us said we wouldn’t be able to do it because of all the amazing stories we’d been reading and yet… Here we are! 😀 Let The Dead Speak goes straight to my wishlist! I really enjoyed The Child and The Silent Kookaburra too, there were very interesting reads, though very different! I love your list, so eclectic! I wish you a bright 2018, I hope you know we are all with you and sending our best vibes and wishes and jokes 🙂 May this year bring you what you need, sweet Jill! xxx

Cheers Meggy, I cheated this year and didn’t whittle down just shared the love for all my 4.5 and 5* reads. Thankfully I don’t scatter them about freely so that made it a bit easier. Thanks for your best wishes, the collective love has certainly helped make my ‘experience’ bearable. Hope 2018 is good to you too xx